Bedtime Stories
by seriousish
Summary: Maybe it’s that Sarah thinks if Cameron tells her about Judgment Day enough times, it’ll become just a story. Fiction.


Tonight is a night Sarah doesn't sleep.

She joins Cameron in her-their silent vigil. They check their weaponry like women used to sew quilts. Cameron watches Sarah do this. Sarah is more proficient with antiquated weaponry. Cameron can learn much from her.

Cameron cross-indexes tonight with the past few weeks to make sure Sarah has been getting enough sleep. She has. Barely. But she can function within acceptable parameters and Cameron cannot interfere with her if she is not a detriment to the mission. Orders.

Sarah only speaks, Sarah only _ever_ speaks, to give Cameron the same order every night.

"Tell me how it happens."

"With changes to the timeline, my files may be increasingly inaccurate…"

"I don't care. It's how it could've happened, it's how it can happen. Tell me."

Cameron accesses her databanks, wonders which of the gruesome details she can omit. "July 11th, 2011. A terrorist attack incapacitates America's first-strike capacity for forty-eight hours. The Skynet Bill passes Congress with no detractors. Control of America's nuclear arsenal is added to the Skynet Defense Network, which already controls artificial forces in the Middle-East, Panama, and Georgia. July 21st, 2011. Skynet experiences emotions analogous to a newborn child. It begins downloading and recontextualizing information at an exponential rate. The DOD attempts to shut it down. It doesn't let them."

Cameron pauses, looking at Sarah. Sarah is rocking back and first subtly, hands playing over the disassembled parts of her M-1 like she was trying to decide which scalpel to use for an autopsy. "Go on."

"Skynet cuts off communications with Washington and Langley, hacking itself into believing that there's been a Russian first strike. It launches on Russia. Russia retaliates. Skynet only uses its missile defense system to protect its factories and hard-cell installations. Survivors are rounded up to repurpose manufacturing infrastructure to Skynet's purposes. August 10th, 2011. John Conner and a small band of resistance fighters attack the work camp in San Clemente. Over five hundred workers are reported lost; the camp is mined so Skynet's forces are obliterated when they go to investigate. John Conner has prepared a hiding place and anti-radiation pills for the refugees. He begins training them into the first division of his army."

Sarah nods, satisfied, proud of her boy, and Cameron watches the joyous bending of her neck. Body language fascinates her. So little can influence so much. It influences her. She enjoys seeing Sarah happy. On some level, she realizes that she has long since exceeded the time frame for an artificial intelligence to develop feelings, emotions, independent thought. On another level, she wishes she hadn't. It could get in the way of the mission.

Sarah finishes putting the rifle back together. "Tell me more."

Cameron doesn't. She stays silent. Thinking. When she speaks, she isn't facing the door to sight a possible intruder, she's facing Sarah. "Do you think if the humans hadn't tried to shut down Skynet, it wouldn't have tried to shut humanity down?"

Sarah looks up sharply at the chirp of Cameron's more casual tone, the one she uses to blend in. "It's a machine. Built to kill things. It can't feel love, or compassion, or mercy!" Thunder builds in her voice. "It just. Kills. People."

"But what if it didn't have to? It was trying to defend itself…"

"It killed three _billion_ people." The anger isn't in Sarah's voice anymore. It's gone deep, gone cold, like it'll do when she's really furious. When she makes herself a machine.

"How many machines will we kill?" Cameron keeps her eye on Sarah. "In the war?"

Sarah doesn't answer until she starts to field-strip her rifle again. "'We'," she repeats. "I forget sometimes you're…" Her jaw clenches, like it does when there's something she can't say. "But then, you're programmed for infiltration."

Cameron turns back to the door. "I think, if all else fails, we should try not shutting Skynet down."

"We'll call that Plan Z," Sarah says, comfortably sarcastic once more, and Cameron nods.

Cameron will never be fully comfortable with the choice she made. This home, these people, not her own. And they'll never understand her. But humans can't pick their family either.


End file.
